3 Keys To Making BYOD Work For Your Classroom

Many teacher who want to truly bring successful Bring-Your-Own-Device practices into their classrooms struggle with how to go about it in the right way. There are so many things to consider, but luckily we have Ilan Paretsky to give us some advice in the following Edudemic article. ”

via Edudemic

BYOD continues to change the learning ecosystem, which includes administrators, teachers, faculty, students and school IT. Today, schools supplement books and whiteboards with smartphones, web portals and other technologies that make education an interactive experience. The consumerization of IT (CoIT) is driving widespread adoption of mobile devices throughout K-12 programs, supplementing school-owned desktops and laptops.

While there are many benefits of BYOD and CoIT in education, getting everyone involved in the learning process (including parents) to collaborate in and outside the classroom is the most compelling. Another advantage is that BYOD allows schools to stretch IT resources, and do more with less. And even with tighter budgets, they can overcome technical and socio-economic barriers that may impact a quality education.

More than a technology initiative, however, BYOD can be an equalizer; it can democratize education and enable universal learning environments, accessible to everyone. The combination of affordable devices and growing adoption of BYOD in K-12 is enabling schools to succeed in achieving their 1-to-1 computing goals.

Among those served by BYOD – school administrators, teachers, students, parents and IT personnel – a successful program requires centralization, browser-based accessibility, and mobility.

Centralization

Schools must centralize their technology infrastructure to extend the life of their Windows desktops, applications and legacy systems. By centralizing these resources, IT can provide secure access to learning curriculum across a broad range of school-issued computers and devices in addition to those owned by teachers, students and parents.

Moreover, centralization enables understaffed IT teams to manage day-to-day operations more efficiently and cost-effectively. Aside from cost savings, however, the real value of centralization is the flexibility for teachers and students to be more productive in and outside the classroom.

Browser-Based Accessibility

Today’s HTML5-compliant Web browsers provide universal, device-agnostic access to school resources. One result is that schools no longer have to manage endpoint devices and install software and updates. Google’s Chrome, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Mozilla’s Firefox and Apple’s Safari all support HTML5 and are widely available on smartphones, phablets, tablets and computers. Browser-based accessibility removes the technical barriers of installing and managing device specific apps, reduces costs and most importantly gives teachers and students flexible options to connect, collaborate and learn.

Mobility

The pervasiveness of cloud computing and mobility will continue to provide new opportunities, streamline processes and create unique learning environments. However, the utility of mobile devices will only be as good as the resources schools can make easily accessible. Remote access technology  enables schools to deliver next-generation education and curriculum to anyone, from anywhere using an array of devices – all via a web browser.

As students, teachers and administrators increasingly use their own computing devices, schools must rethink how they can take advantage of centralized IT resources, browser-based accessibility and mobility to garner efficiency and identify new opportunities that ensure a positive learning experience.

5 Ways to Make Class Discussions More Exciting

“How do you make classroom discussion more exciting? Dr. Richard Curwin has the answer. Dr. Curwin is the director of the graduate program for behaviour disorder at David Yellin College. A few of the exercises that he profiles in this Edutopia article are similar to ones I’ve used in theatre studies to connect and engage with others. Try them with students—they’re fun and effective in equal measures!”

via Edutopia

Can Virtual Reality Be Used to Tackle Racism?

“Implicit racism—a bias the holder is unaware of—can be reduced after spending a short time in virtual reality. In the following BBC article, Melissa Hogenboom asks if this could possibly have a longer lasting effect. Read on to find out more …”

via BBC News

It’s an uncomfortable truth but scientists say most people have an ingrained racial bias. Now a team has shown that a short stint in a virtual world could reduce it, but could this have a longer lasting effect?

Racism is an issue that still pervades many societies.

In England and Wales, there have been 106 fatal racist attacks since the killing of teenager Stephen Lawrence in 1993 according to the Institute of Race Relations. It also reports thousands of racist incidents recorded by the police each year.

The issue is complicated by the fact that many biases are ingrained over long periods of time.

Scientists have now found that this ingrained racial bias was reduced when participants were immersed in a virtual body of a different race.

To test their implicit racism, a team led by Mel Slater at the University of Barcelona gave participants what’s called an implicit association test several days before the experiment. They were given the same test again after their experience in virtual reality.

It was only the participants who had been placed in a dark virtual body that showed this decrease.

Another unrelated study had similar results. A team found that when a dark rubber hand was stroked at the same time as the participant’s own (out of sight) hand was touched, implicit racism subsequently decreased. This work was led by Manos Tsakiris at Royal Holloway University of London.

Both teams say it’s promising that two separate experimental settings show this effect.

Participants’ body movements were tracked using a motion-capture suit

It might be surprising to some white people that they show preference for white faces over black faces in the implicit test. This could be for a number of reasons, says Prof Slater.

It doesn’t mean someone is explicitly racist, he says, rather it reflects how their brain has been wired based on the society in which they grew up.

If the media frequently reports negatively on a given “out-group”, for example, then somehow the brain picks up these associations which are reproduced in the implicit bias test.

He refers to virtual reality as an “empathy generating machine” to give people experiences they can’t have in any other way.

The question remains whether or not these findings could ever be applied in the real world.

Prof Slater believes they could: “If the effect is shown to be long-lasting this might provide tools for serious immersive games that attempt to foster pro-social behaviour and empathy,” he argues.

Prof Tsakiris agrees. He believes that achieving similar results could even be possible without an experimental set-up.

“It’s about the idea of sharing sensory experiences with people that might be different from you. This sharing – especially when there is some kind of synchronicity between people’s bodies – it can bring people closer together.

“Doing things with others seems to function as a social glue. The obvious thing would be to have no segregation in society, not to have any schools dominated by one ethnic group,” Prof Tsakiris adds.

“It’s about the idea of sharing sensory experiences with people that might be different from you . . . it can bring people closer together.”

It is still unclear how long-lasting these effects would be. Prof Slater says this will be hard to pin down, but rolling the technology out into the real world in the first instance is a possibility.

“It may be used to help people who have these implicit biases, to recognise they have them but also to reduce them.”

But Antony Greenwald, at the University of Washington in Seattle, says it’s still too early to be optimistic because the negative associations measured by the implicit racism test “are pretty durable”.

“The best interpretation is that this makes some sort of temporary change in how a person represents the categories [of race].

“We live in a world in which we are surrounded by things that cause us to develop associations that produce stereotypes. It’s like the air we breathe; we can’t help talking it in,” Prof Greenwald adds.

However, Ziada Ayorech, from King’s College London says the research shows that a negative racial bias could be detuned over time and could even become positive.

“When we think of something as implicit racial bias you think that it’s already ingrained and there’s nothing you can do, but in reality these studies show that by simply having people relate to someone with a different ethnicity – you can already change that.

“New associations will be built. It’s a stepping stone, for sure.”

But outside an experimental setting, tackling ingrained racism remains difficult, especially because it’s hidden, says Neil Chakraborti, a criminologist at the University of Leicester who works with victims of racist attacks.

“Precisely because it is almost impossible to label it as an offence, latent racism is rarely reported. You see people normalise these kinds of experiences; it’s become a routine part of being different,” he says.

This issue of prejudice is something Dal Babu feels he has experienced in the police force – an organisation he says should be representative of the society it aims to protect.

He was one of the UK’s top ethnic minority officers at the Metropolitan Police, and was critical of the lack of black and Asian recruits and how few were in senior positions.

“The irony and most commonly quoted phrase by Sir Robert Peel (founder of the Met Police) is that the public are the police and the police are the public,” he says.

But despite his efforts, the majority of senior police officers “remain stubbornly white”, Mr Babu adds.

It’s clear that there is no one simple way to tackle an issue as complex as racism. Until researchers find that reducing an innate bias can be reproduced and sustained, an awareness of it seems a crucial first step.

And while its use outside the lab may be some way off, scientists say that virtual reality provides a stepping stone towards increased empathy with others in the real world.

How To Make Students Better Online Researchers

This article written by Sahiba Pahwa and published on EdTechReview offers up a practical strategy for developing Information Fluency skills in students, specifically in regards to researching online. The article includes a useful set of links for teachers to explore that are great resources for this.”

via EdTechReview

How many times has it been that you’re trying to search for a specific site or on a specific topic too hard but in the end you end up finding nothing. Have you ever questioned yourself why this happens? Well as much as the internet is the easiest and quickest way to acquire abundance of knowledge, it comes with some cons too. For one the task of finding the exact and right place is hard, and then it’s not only collecting the right data but also organizing it in an orderly manner.

For example, you’re aiming to search for the reasons for the great recession that just occurred in the economy. Now just about typing the word recession you may get millions of information sites but it does not help your purpose, not even close to it. So what would you need to do? You would have to type a term that explains about that specific recession like typing “recession in US in early 2000s” your search would become much exact and information would be more clear. Further you would want to know what happened in that recession, it’s effects and the conclusion you draw from it. So you see we have methodically categorized our research.

You see a very easy task like doing an online research also needs some amount of skills and I can help you in acknowledging what those skills are and how to go about it.

So the first and foremost step towards it is asking the right questions to get the right answers. These simple steps can make your research more efficient and effective manner. (Also learn how Using Twitter for Online Research is a great idea)

How to make students better online researchers?

Planning the map inside your head is the most important task of a man. Without a plan a person is just a clueless wanderer. And into the vast oceans of information a wanderer is just bound to be lost. Map in your mind, what is research all about, what are the key points and what you hope to achieve as the conclusion of this research and does your information smoothly flows proving towards your conclusion? This makes the job of searching easier.

Use unique, specific terms

It is simply amazing how many Web pages are returned when performing a search. You might guess that the terms tiger are relatively specialized. A Google search of those terms returned 2,440,000 results! To reduce the number of pages returned, use unique terms that are specific to the subject you are researching.

Use quotation marks for exact phrases

I often remember parts of phrases I have seen on a Web page or part of a quotation I want to track down. Using quotation marks around a phrase will return only those exact words in that order. It’s one of the best ways to limit the pages returned..

Don’t use common words

The major problem starts when you have totally bizarre and uncommon words that may give you millions of results but none related to your research. Trust me that happens a lot! So be careful with what words you choose.

Maximize AutoComplete

Ordering search terms from general to specific in the search box will display helpful results in a drop-down list and is the most efficient way to use AutoComplete. Selecting the appropriate item as it appears will save time typing. You have several choices for how the AutoComplete feature works.

Selecting the most apt site

Many of the online researchers know which site they often will find the right kind of information they require. This makes the elimination of unwanted sites easier and hence improving your speed and quality of research.

Elimination of unwanted Information through speedy evaluation

One should not only have the skill to select the right site but also eliminating the unwanted or vague information provided by the internet through speedy and critical reading and evaluation.

After all these steps I’m very sure your search would become a much easier task and you will see great changes in the quality and quantity of your research.

Useful Links For Searchers:

Here are some links that offer some resources for teachers trying to teach students the digital literacies involved with searching.

• Safe Search Engines for Your Kids
• How to Spot a Fake Website
• Great Tech Expectations: What Should Elementary Students be Able to do and When?
• Boolify Project: An Educational Boolean Web Search Tool (very visual)
• Boolean Searching on the Internet
• Rockwell Schrock’s Boolean Machine
• Web Search Strategies in Plain English

How PBS KIDS Puts Play at the Center of Digital Content Development

“Play is a powerful component of childhood development. It allows children to explore, make connections, and develop a better understanding of the world and themselves. Susan DeWitt shares her insights about using play to implement or reinforce learning. She also provides links to some wonderful classroom resources for readers to preview and use in their classrooms or homes. ”

via Fred Rogers Center

In 1999, I participated in a play-testing session with preschoolers from a Head Start center in Arlington, Virginia. I was just a few weeks into my job as a production associate at PBS KIDS, and we were testing the soon-to-launch Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood website.

When I sat down with 4-year-old Marisa, she cautiously moved the mouse across the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. She hovered briefly over X the Owl, when suddenly the character on screen raised his wing and waved. Marisa let go of the mouse, pushed back her chair, jumped up and started waving back. For the next 10 minutes, this was all Marisa wanted to do: make X wave at her, jump up from her chair, wave back, and smile happily.

In 1999, we were in the very early days of the internet; Marisa had never played with a computer before our research session, and I question whether many of today’s 4-year-olds would be enthralled by an animated gif. But that moment with Marisa has remained with me throughout my years in digital content development at PBS KIDS. It’s a reminder that games for preschoolers don’t need to be overly complicated to engage children in meaningful play, and that our strongest engagement opportunities often begin in very natural play patterns.

Many years and technologies later, my team has probably participated in hundreds of usability sessions, and we can still be surprised by our youngest visitors. The difference between “engaging” and “overwhelming” to one room of 5-year-olds was entirely dependent on a background color. After countless conversation about the right “STOP” button for our video player, we discovered the question was moot: when 3-year-olds are finished watching, they just run away from the computer (or, maybe just click on something else entirely).

“Play gives children a chance to practice what they are learning. They have to play with what they know to be true in order to find out more, and then they can use what they learn in new forms of play.”
—Fred Rogers

The “wheel” on the pbskids.org homepage that links to characters? Not unlike Marisa playing with X the Owl, we’ve watched children spin that wheel just so they can identify the characters when they sweep past, approaching our main navigational element as an activity in itself. As our creative director regularly says to interface designers, “Approach everything like it’s a game.” Preschoolers are coming up with new ways to play every time they visit a PBS KIDS experience. Part of our job is keeping the controls accessible, and putting kids in the driver’s seat to play.

Fred Rogers taught us that “play gives children a chance to practice what they are learning.” Preschoolers bring their own life experiences and daily skill development to every activity, and that’s no different for digital media. Once while testing a finger-painting activity on a smart phone, I watched a little boy use his pointer finger to scribble the color green all over the screen. He then lifted his hand and turned it over, looking to see if he now had green paint on his finger. How did this activity compare to the one he might have done at his table earlier in the day?

And I love it when a new technology emerges and our producers can begin adding new play elements into their games. When cameras became ubiquitous in desktops and laptops, our partners at WGBH developed a Curious George game in which kids could jump up and down to make George do the same on screen. In a Peg + Cat game from the Fred Rogers Company, 9ate7Productions, and CloudKid, children can wave their hands to capture and sort different shapes. And with Wild Kratts, kids can now mimic the behavior of bats and snakes through the camera in order to see how the animals move in the wild. Not only do these games incorporate very natural play patterns for children—jumping, motion—but I’m particularly interested to see how this type of play could reinforce learning.

The Kratt Brothers are now in production on a new tablet game in which kids need to help orangutans swing from vine to vine. In this case, they can use the tilt mechanic, getting a handle on how much momentum and speed is required to make that motion by moving the tablet itself. We’re also testing what types of smartphone and tablet experiences could better promote interactions between preschoolers and their parents—not just on the screen, but away from the computer as well.

At PBS KIDS, this intersection between screen-based play and hands-on activities is central to our mission, and true to the legacy that pioneers like Fred Rogers set for us. I once watched a child hop out of the room like a caracal after play-testing a Wild Kratts game. How can we inspire children to continue to play with new skills and concepts they have encountered in educational media after the screen is turned off?

About the Author

As Vice President of PBS KIDS Digital, Sara DeWitt oversees day-to-day development of PBS’ multiplatform content for kids and families, including the Kidscreen- and Webby-award winning pbskids.org, PBS KIDS’ suite of mobile apps, streaming video, interactive whiteboard games, and more. Having joined PBS Digital in 1999, DeWitt has worked with producers on a variety of award-winning television program sites, such as Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, Curious George, and Arthur. Before coming to PBS KIDS, DeWitt worked as a preschool teacher and studied leadership opportunities for teenagers in rural areas.

To MOOC, or Not to MOOC (Infographic)

“This infographic was sent from Juliet Rich for Top Colleges Online. To MOOC or Not to MOOC—that is indeed the question. One wonders if online learning could possibly have helped Hamlet or any of Shakespeare’s tragic figures lead less tumultuous lives. We’ll never know, but what we do know is that today MOOCs have their share of supporters and critics alike. Looks like we’ll just have to make up our own minds, and this creative infographic should help a little.”

Top 10 eLearning Stats for 2014 – Infographic

“The evolution of eLearning, much like the beloved Christmas song goes, doesn’t show signs of stopping. In fact, according to this infographic posted by Christopher Pappas on Open Education Europa, it’s poised to be bigger than ever in 2014. The infographic was created by eLearning Industry. ”

via Open Education Europa

(Here is a link to to an article also written by Christopher Pappas that briefly explains the Top 10 eLearning Statistics for 2014 Infographic.)

The Slow Gamification of K-12 Classrooms

“Gaming is extremely popular. Marketers are wasting no expense in hooking children and parents on the benefits of learning games. However, teachers and schools have not been targeted in these marketing efforts, because it is a waste of time and money. Schools are slow to embrace new edtech trends because of money, and their historically slow adoption process of anything new. Dr. Matthew Lynch explores the potential of incorporating new digital initiatives such as gaming into the classroom and asks readers for strategies to help this process along. ”

via Huffington Post

Children are becoming acutely acquainted with mobile technology long before their K-12 classroom years. When they arrive at their first organized school experiences, they are often already savvy on basic computers and mobile devices. If their parents used this technology correctly, these kids have had at least some exposure to phonics and math through learning websites, downloads and other applications.

Research suggests that once these young learners enter a classroom, however, learning through tech “games” disappears. Families may still choose to buy the apps and use them at home but schools are slow to bring gamification of education into their classrooms.

A report by the market research group Ambient Insight found that edtech in the forms of learning games is not making its way into classrooms. Instead of educators making learning game purchases, marketers target parents because they are the ones who buy them. The North American edtech market is expected to grow over 15 percent in the next half-decade but company leaders have candidly said that they will focus marketing efforts on parents, not schools. To paraphrase, targeting schools is simply a waste of time.

So why are games developed for young learners having such a difficult time entering classrooms?

The reasons are simple enough. Money is a factor and it impacts more than the purchase of the games or applications themselves. K-12 schools are still in the process of creating mobile technology policies and finding the money in their budgets to fund these initiatives. There are also issues of slow internet speeds and low bandwidths that prevent too many students from flooding the network at once. If teachers do not have the right technology in their classrooms, they cannot purchase the games to enhance lessons.

There seems to be a distrust of games, and in some cases of technology in general, and their place in the classroom setting.

Regulations are another issue when it comes to the quick implementation of learning technology, including games. There seems to be a distrust of games, and in some cases of technology in general, and their place in the classroom setting. By the time teachers can prove the worth of the games they want to use, another game is available with more bells and whistles. For-profit companies that develop these learning games have no hoops to jump through with parents but the same cannot be said of schools.

Does all of this really matter, though? Are kids still learning what they need to know without inundation of education games? While the general consensus seems to be that screen time “rots” the brains of little ones, researchers have actually found benefits for young minds. In her paper “Children’s Motivations for Video Game Play in the Context of Normal Development,” Cheryl Olson found that games, even non-educational ones, improve decision-making and encourage self-expression in children. If there is an educational feature, children absorb the knowledge while finely tuning motor and strategic skills.

It stands to reason then that children with access to gaming technology at home are at an advantage. If there was no educational gaming at home AND no educational gaming at school, it would be a different story. Instead, parents that can afford the vehicles for the technology and the games themselves are able to better prepare children for the classroom and academic success – furthering a socio-economic achievement gap. Through educational technology that is readily available to consumers, the advantaged become more so and the disadvantaged fall farther behind.

For all students to benefit from edtech initiatives, schools need to find the funding for better technology suites and cut through red tape more quickly. Otherwise the educational opportunities presented through gaming will never be fully realized and the students will suffer.

Have you found ways to incorporate edtech, particularly when it comes to gaming, into your classroom?

Dr. Matthew Lynch is the author of the upcoming textbook, The Call to Teach: An Introduction to Teaching. 

Federal Gov’t Issues Warning to State That Wants to Opt Out of Common Core

25 Trends Disrupting Education Right Now

25 Trends Disrupting Education Right Nowby Terry HeickDisruption doesn’t sound like a pretty word, but in the long run, it can be a beautiful thing.

Disruption is about shifting power.

Eroding patterns.

Breaking the system.

In education, this can come from the most unlikely of sources. While brilliant folks struggle to their marrow every day to conjure ideas that will transform education, in other cases, it just seems to happen out of nowhere.

In these cases, small moves via modest platforms create large ripples.

It isn’t always from the most powerful technology, the most noble intents, or even the best ideas that disrupt. In fact, it is impossible to predict what will allow something to “catch”–there are simply so many moving parts.

So we’ve created a scale. This scale visually demonstrates the inherent disruptive potential of recent and current education initiatives or technological advancements.

It is not meant to be exhaustive, and it’s absolutely subjective, but maybe we’ll be lucky enough that it might spark a conversation.

And it is through informed conversation that more disruption can grow.

Note that this is not intended to be an evaluation of the quality of each of these initiatives. In that way, it’s not suggesting that “smartphone integration” has more educational value than MITx. Rather, it is strictly a look at the potential of that initiative to disrupt existing systems.

Re-balance power.

And catalyze new learning forms.

More Disruption

1. The Internet 

2. New Learning Models

3. Informal & Self-Directed Learning Platforms  

4. BYOD/Smartphone Integration

5. MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses)

6. Service-Based Learning/Place-Based Education

7. Growth of “Homeschooling”

8. Flipped Classroom

9. Project-Based Learning

10. iTunesU

11. Learni.st/MentorMob

12. TED-Ed

13. 1:1 iPads

14. MITx/EdX and OCW

15. Social Media Integration

16. 1:1 Laptop programs

17. MIT OpenCourseWare

18. Non 1:1 laptop-iPad programs

19. Apple Textbook Initiative

20. Professional Learning Communities

21. Teach for America

22. Charter Schools

23. Gender-Specific Classes

24. Race to the Top

25. Common Core Adoption (i.e., one set of national standards)

Less Disruption